Friday, 23 November 2012

Sat. Nov. 17th 2012

While we were grocery shopping we got a call from Elks to say that they were waiting at the Mission Office to get the key to the van! We knew they were coming, but not that early. Fortunately, we were just checking out and made haste getting back to the office, but the Assts. heard them and let them in to get the key, so they weren't held up too much after all. There were fears of a big protest getting out of hand today. The protestors numbered about 22,000, but there were 7,000 riot police on hand and there was no violence. Apparently it is a commemoration of an event that took place in 1973. There was a student uprising at the Polytechnic which resulted in a number of deaths and they are still protesting 39 years later! One of Elks jobs is looking after the apartments and the sister's bunk beds had no ladder to the top bunk and it was therefore difficult to get up there - so the Elks got twin beds out of the storage at the Mission Home and took them over. They then dismantled the bunk beds and took them to one of the elder's apartments which was a larger unit - then they came back here and we had lunch together and a good visit.